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Experts explore new mushroom which causes fairytale-like hallucinations

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Re: Experts explore new mushroom which causes fairytale-like hallucinations

#121

Post by username135 »

uh_uh wrote: post #83
VanshPatel99 wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would expect this way of thinking about evolution would be common but unfortunately it isn't. I feel the way we say "X animal evolved to do Y" sets the ton as if it was a active, thought out decision. Instead, it was just 1000s of mutation happened and maybe a certain kind was able to survive while other wasn't. It is more of a mathematical concept than conscious one.

I find it hard to believe that evolution is completely blind. The search space that it can explore via mutations is astronomically large. Considering that the experiment is run at planet-scale over billions of years doesn't really save the argument as it takes some specimen years to develop and get feedback on their fitness. It's hard to believe that it's truly just random "bit-flips". I'm not trying to suggest woo h…

Why does it need some kind of boundary? What if it was operating on a limitless trajectory?

Re: Experts explore new mushroom which causes fairytale-like hallucinations

#122

Post by rolph »

airstrike wrote: post #17
candiddevmike wrote: post #3

SWIM would like to know how to get paid as (instead of paying to be) "an expert who explores new mushrooms".

I always feel like they should bring along an artist for the trip so we can get a visual depiction of what it was like

Ride my Llama

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GMC3DjAFQEs

Re: Experts explore new mushroom which causes fairytale-like hallucinations

#123

Post by seizethecheese »

choilive wrote: post #65
card_zero wrote: post #63

So, about one mushroom species in five is poisonous. Why is the ratio so low, why are there lots of edible ones? Without hard-shelled seeds to spread, why be eaten? And the poisonous ones apparently don't use color as a warning signal, and don't smell all that bad, and some of the poisons have really mild effects, like "gives only some people diarrhea" or "makes a hangover worse". Meanwhile three of the deadliest spe…

Its the same evolutionary patterns that plants went through. Most mushrooms are edible because their spores can pass through the digestive system of most animals, thus allowing them to spread. Other mushrooms developed toxins to protect their fruiting bodies - often the biggest threat isn't larger animals, but insects. Toxins that are neurotoxic to insect nervous systems, happen to cause mostly "harmless" psychedelic…

> Toxins that are neurotoxic to insect nervous systems, happen to cause mostly "harmless" psychedelic trips to our brains.

True for coffee as well (if you substitute psychedelic with a more appropriate word).

Re: Experts explore new mushroom which causes fairytale-like hallucinations

#124

Post by cluckindan »

choilive wrote: post #65
card_zero wrote: post #63

So, about one mushroom species in five is poisonous. Why is the ratio so low, why are there lots of edible ones? Without hard-shelled seeds to spread, why be eaten? And the poisonous ones apparently don't use color as a warning signal, and don't smell all that bad, and some of the poisons have really mild effects, like "gives only some people diarrhea" or "makes a hangover worse". Meanwhile three of the deadliest spe…

Its the same evolutionary patterns that plants went through. Most mushrooms are edible because their spores can pass through the digestive system of most animals, thus allowing them to spread. Other mushrooms developed toxins to protect their fruiting bodies - often the biggest threat isn't larger animals, but insects. Toxins that are neurotoxic to insect nervous systems, happen to cause mostly "harmless" psychedelic…

Insects have the some of the same neurotransmitters as mammals, but they can be relaying different things. For example, dopamine is not used for reward learning, but for aversion learning and pain.

Re: Experts explore new mushroom which causes fairytale-like hallucinations

#126

Post by contingencies »

reissbaker wrote: post #68
contingencies wrote: post #61

Lived in Yunnan for over a decade, primarily as a vegetarian. Mushrooms there are indeed many and varied and quite tasty. Many poisonings annually but the government are pretty good at helping people to ID with warning posters. Personally ate many mushrooms that looked like this and never had hallucinations. Did have some others which made me feel a little ill, however. I suspect locals are unduly relaxed about types…

According to Wikipedia, the Yunnan mushrooms indeed have their hallucinogens broken down after cooking: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hallucinogenic_bolete_mushroom Good guess! Although, the local hospital records imply that hallucinations can last for days or even months, so uh, probably not a great idea to go looking for them...

According to a voluminous illustrated tome I acquired during my extended stay, Yunnan has at least seven species of native psilocybe. Like nearby areas along the Himalayas, cannabis and opium are endemic and widely utilized in traditional cultures of the area. Heroin processed in Myanmar became a problem in rural Yunnan the early 2000s and present-era government shut it down with a heavy-handed campaign around 15 years ago. These days it's probably trans-shipped more than locally consumed.

Re: Experts explore new mushroom which causes fairytale-like hallucinations

#127

Post by temp0826 »

reissbaker wrote: post #68
contingencies wrote: post #61

Lived in Yunnan for over a decade, primarily as a vegetarian. Mushrooms there are indeed many and varied and quite tasty. Many poisonings annually but the government are pretty good at helping people to ID with warning posters. Personally ate many mushrooms that looked like this and never had hallucinations. Did have some others which made me feel a little ill, however. I suspect locals are unduly relaxed about types…

According to Wikipedia, the Yunnan mushrooms indeed have their hallucinogens broken down after cooking: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hallucinogenic_bolete_mushroom Good guess! Although, the local hospital records imply that hallucinations can last for days or even months, so uh, probably not a great idea to go looking for them...

My guess would be there is probably some contamination with something ergot-like going on. Long-lasting but maybe hard to detect because such a small amount is needed for effect that it's easy to miss.

Re: Experts explore new mushroom which causes fairytale-like hallucinations

#128

Post by fc417fc802 »

PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #107
fc417fc802 wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While your objection is technically correct it can still be useful (ie simple, straightforward, etc) to phrase things in terms of a goal. Since a goal (pursued by an intelligent being) and optimization pressure (a property of a blind process) are approximately the same thing in the end. In other words, Anthropomorphization can be useful despite not being true in a literal sense. Certainly this can be misleading to th…

No. "Optimization pressure" makes it sound as if there is a single metric for optimization, whereas there are a constantly shifting set of different metrics. Worse (or more precisely, more complex) there are frequently multiple different "solutions" for a given metric, and evolution doesn't care. Put a little differently, there is no "optimization" pressure at all: evolution is not attempting to optimize anything (*)…

You're being overly literal. It's not "trying to fit anthropomorphized design onto a process" but rather "using anthropomorphization as a descriptive tool". This situation is not unlike when someone takes issue with an analogy due to erroneously interpreting it as a direct comparison.

> here are frequently multiple different "solutions" for a given metric

So too are there multiple different options when working towards any nontrivial goal in the real world. In the context of stochastic optimization the multi-armed bandit problem is a rather well known concept.

> evolution is not attempting to optimize anything

For the purpose of communication (of some other idea) it could be reasonable to say that the human race merely wants survival first and foremost. That is what evolution is after, at least in a sense. Of course that is not technically correct. Pointing out technical inconsistencies isn't going to convince me that I'm in the wrong here because I've already explicitly acknowledged their presence and explained why as far as I'm concerned objecting to them is simply missing the point.

Switching to a technical angle, to claim that evolution is not optimizing is to claim that water doesn't flow downhill but rather molecules just happen to vibrate and move around at random. It's completely ignoring the broader context. Evolution happens at a species level. It's an abstract concept inherently tied to other abstract concepts such as optimization and survival.

Re: Experts explore new mushroom which causes fairytale-like hallucinations

#129

Post by RicardoLuis0 »

Sharlin wrote: post #91
fooqux wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Two things: 0) Humans (and even our recent ancestors) eating you are a very recent thing to be concerned about, numbers-wise. By the time our numbers were enough to provide evolutionary pressure, we started farming what we wanted, which kinda breaks the process. Also. most poisons don't effect everything equally, so what might prevent a horse from eating you might taste delicious to us (like the nightshade family) or…

0) What do humans have to do with it? We're not the only animals that eat mushrooms.

that's exactly the point, the _lack of_ humans during its evolution is what it has to do with us, a mushroom may be poisonous to the species that it evolved around, while at the same time not being poisonous to humans

Re: Experts explore new mushroom which causes fairytale-like hallucinations

#130

Post by bluerooibos »

card_zero wrote: post #63

So, about one mushroom species in five is poisonous. Why is the ratio so low, why are there lots of edible ones? Without hard-shelled seeds to spread, why be eaten? And the poisonous ones apparently don't use color as a warning signal, and don't smell all that bad, and some of the poisons have really mild effects, like "gives only some people diarrhea" or "makes a hangover worse". Meanwhile three of the deadliest spe…

Amanita Muscaria seems like it does use colour as a warning signal - it's bright red.
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